Once you sit down, calm your breath, and place your attention on your heart, you’re off to a good start. But that is only the beginning. Your mind won’t stay silent for long! Soon, it will come back and ask what’s for dinner tonight 😉 You got it, now we need to start the long journey of taming the mind.

Capturing the Uncaught Mind is a technique I first encountered during my stays at Buddhist monastery, and it continues to prove to be quite effective. Basically, it actually is just counting breaths. In this counting, a full cycle of inhale, exhale, and the pauses between inhale and exhale counts as one breath. So, the second full cycle only counts as two. In its most basic form, you count to ten, and then when you reach ten, you start over. There is no goal. You just count.

You will find soon enough that it is not easy at all to keep counting. Once your brain finds a hook to catch your attention, your thoughts will start to work again, and there goes your count! As a basic rule, don’t fight the thoughts, just keep counting. Variations of this counting can be introduced to increase the difficulty level and that will help to further condition the brain.